


The Mind Once Enlightened

by thesunburntscientist



Category: The 100 (TV)
Genre: Action & Romance, Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Angst, Angst and Feels, City of Light (The 100), Civil War, Drama & Romance, Minor Character Death, Polis, Political Intrigue, Politics, Post-Canon, Post-Canon Fix-It, Slow Build, Slow Burn, Strong Female Characters, Treason, Violence
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2016-06-26
Updated: 2016-08-14
Packaged: 2018-07-18 06:49:34
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 2
Words: 12,773
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7303918
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/thesunburntscientist/pseuds/thesunburntscientist
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>The dead lay burned and grotesque, exposed before the Mountain. Melted alive by the pull of a lever, by fire they could neither see, nor hear, nor touch. Rain falls heavy, cold. Delivers a sting to those that move below. Lexa leads a group of her warriors to the forest’s edge, sees a small band of the Skaikru at the opposite end. One steps to meet her in the open glade, his steps tentative as he emerges from the safety of the trees, eyes fixed on the dozens of corpses between them. The purpose of their meeting looms thick, draws deep lines into wan faces. They most broker a peace over blood-soaked soil, find a way to move forward amongst the bones of their enemies. The Commander decided she would attend this meeting to signal the importance of this juncture, her sincere will to end the fighting, the breaking of bodies and spirits. Senseless. But she also has another purpose, one that will come later. One that weighs heavier.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. 1

**Author's Note:**

> This is my attempt to reimagine The 100's third season. I use the first few canon episodes as a rough roadmap. Some events and plot points will be the same as we saw in the show, or at least hinted at, and you'll recognize those parts. Others will be very different. This story will diverge from the canon completely around the 3x06 mark. Narrative perspective will alternate between Clarke and Lexa and will focus on how both characters deal with the repercussions of Mount Weather and the choices they made there, both personally and politically. The romantic aspect of their relationship will be a slow build and hopefully culminate in a much more satisfactory and compelling way than the show offered its viewers.
> 
> I hope you enjoy the work, and any comments/constructive criticism/Kudos are always welcome and appreciated.
> 
> You can catch me, and some of my original work and general goings-on, here: thesunburntscientist.tumblr.com

**From the earth—**

 

The dead lay burned and grotesque, exposed before the Mountain. Melted alive by the pull of a lever, by fire they could neither see, nor hear, nor touch. Rain falls heavy, cold. Delivers a sting to those that move below. Lexa leads a group of her warriors to the forest’s edge, sees a small band of the Skaikru at the opposite end. One steps to meet her in the open glade, his steps tentative as he emerges from the safety of the trees, eyes fixed on the dozens of corpses between them. The purpose of their meeting looms thick, draws deep lines into wan faces. They most broker a peace over blood-soaked soil, find a way to move forward amongst the bones of their enemies. The Commander decided she would attend this meeting to signal the importance of this juncture, her sincere will to end the fighting, the breaking of bodies and spirits. Senseless. But she also has another purpose, one that will come later. One that weighs heavier.

 

Lexa moves through the ruins, both of flesh and of stone, inspecting the damage. Her progress is scientific, as distant and cold as the stars would stare at the earth. She hides well the writhing of her stomach, the shame and disgust that even one of her experience, one born to violence, one shaped by violence, feels when looking at such devastation. Cruel in its finality. The atrocities that happened here make her heart constrict, stinging with an unexpected kind of pity, not for the dead, but for those who survived. Those strange few that had the ruthlessness and the instruments to end what her people had struggled to end for decades. Those same few that watched her survey their ugly achievements from the treeline, those that fell from the sky. One of them steps quietly behind her now, careful not to jostle the corpses at his feet.

 

“What will you do with the bodies?” the Commander asks, clasping her hands behind her back.

 

“We were thinking of burning them,” answers Marcus Kane. He keeps pace with her as she moves, though maintains a polite distance between them. His dark eyes reflect a similar revulsion she feels grinding between her shoulder blades, tightening her jaw.

 

_They will burn again._

 

She gives a single nod in agreement. “To prevent the spread of disease.”

 

“Yes.”

 

“This place is to remain empty. No one will live inside these walls. Your people destroyed the Mountain, but they did not conquer it.” She inclines her head toward the corpses. “I will not have savages be replaced with more savages.”

 

“Yes, Commander. We ask permission, though, to take what medicine is there and leave, to be used for the benefit of all the Clans. Our doctor, Abby Griffin, mentioned it could be put to doing great good.”

 

The sound of that last name feels like the scorch of a whip, nearly makes her wince to hear it. It takes all her strength to keep her expression studiously blank, without depth or emotion. “Granted,” she bites out, and steps beyond the slaughter.

 

Marcus follows. “Commander, the Chancellor and her council would like to request an audience with you to discuss our people’s future, if we will be permitted to stay in your lands—”

 

“There will be conditions if you choose to remain under my governance,” Lexa interrupts. She turns, eyes meeting his for the first time. “You may stay, but I expect a representative of Skaikru to be dispatched to Polis to hear these conditions and negotiate a treaty by the end of the month.”

 

“Yes, of course.”

 

Lexa nods again, surveys the man before her behind an impassive expression. “Go,” she finally orders. “Take your people back to your camp and rest, recover. The dead will still be here in the morning.”

 

The bow Marcus gives is not so much a bending of the spine as it is a hanging of his head, defeat in his victory. Despair the bedrock of newfound peace. Lexa knows the feeling well. It is stained in the red sash she wears, it is her shadow, her only truth. Sacrifice. Marcus retreats to the gathering of Skaikru and together, they slip into the depths of the forest like wolves slinking away from the bones of their kill.

 

Lexa watches the trees long after they disappear, then approaches her own small company of riders, huddled beneath the tangled branches at the forest’s edge.

 

“Is he here yet?” she asks the Fleimkeepa, impatience clipping her words.

 

“No, _Heda,_ still we wait.”

 

“I will speak with him alone when he arrives.”

 

“ _Heda_ —”

 

“Alone, Titus.”

 

“As you command.”

 

The warriors grow still, hushed in the chill. Time passes. Rain and frost push them closer together for warmth. Around them the forest breathes, dripping water, leaves shivering in the wind. A pair of deer creeps into the small glade. They freeze, noses twitch on the air. Smell the blood and disappear again. The warriors pull their cloaks tighter to ward off the winter, pressing in from the north, closer and closer every sundown. Thunder growls overhead, a warning. They stand listening.

 

It is only when Lexa feels her own bones starting to grow brittle with cold that a dark silhouette materializes in the half-light of the woods beyond. Eyes narrowing, she feels the warrior beside her tense and she knows she has not imagined it.

 

“He’s here,” she murmurs.

 

The Azgeda outcast steps out into the glade, whistles a strange call into the rain. At the signal Lexa starts forward, holding out a hand to keep her warriors back. Boots whisper through the tall grass as she approaches him, eyes focused, purposeful. She is thankful she wears her full armor, for it makes her appear bigger than she is. It has been years since she has last seen Prince Roan, and he has grown broad, strong in the kind of way that manifests through his clothes, the slope of his shoulders, the thickness of his neck. She stops a few paces before him, straightens her spine to an almost painful degree.

 

“I didn’t take you for one with a taste for morbidity,” remarks the Prince, eyes surveying the scorched earth, the muddy corpses, before landing back on her. “ _Heda_.”

 

Lexa takes a step forward. “I sent you out _weeks_ ago.“ Her words are delivered on the edge of a knife, lethal, threatening to draw blood if his answer does not satisfy her. “What is taking so long?”

 

“She’s turned out to be a bit more resourceful than we estimated.”

 

“She was born to the sky. She knows nothing of life on the ground, its beasts, its storms, the patterns of the earth. You will find her before your mother does and before the snow does, or I will banish you so far from civilization it will not be long before you can’t recall what a human voice sounds like.”

 

All pretense, all smirking conceit, falls from the Prince’s face. “I’ll find her,” he rumbles. “I’m getting close.” He reaches into a breast pocket. Instinctively, Lexa’s hand tightens on the handle of the blade at her hip. “No need for that,” the Prince assures her and pulls out something that glints silver in the falling rain. “Recognize this?”

 

Lexa feels her eyebrows rise, lips part. Roan holds a time contraption. Familiar, caked in dirt, the glass face shattered. But she’s seen it before. Clarke wore it on her right wrist, a permanent fixture of which Lexa did not understand its significance, but knew that it was indeed, significant. To Clarke. The Prince places it in her palm, cold and metallic. Panic floods Lexa’s blood at the touch, a wave of alarm, anger, confusion, scratching, howling in her throat, desperate to be set loose. She swallows it down.

 

“Where did you find this?” she whispers, eyes rising to Roan’s.

 

“Trading post on the outer rim. A few fishermen said she’s been lurking around their village, selling meat, furs. I’ve been tracking her movements around there for a week. There are signs of her. I’m close.”

 

Lexa stares at the Prince, measuring his words, calculating. Clarke’s still alive. The proof sits in the palm of her hand. Lexa grips the silver time-thing like it is the only object anchoring her to the earth and steps closer. “Then find her. Bring her to Polis. Alive.”

 

Roan straightens, his expression settling back into the arrogant smirk only one born to royalty can wear. “Yes, _Heda._ ” He nods toward her closed fist, to the evidence of Clarke’s survival clutched there. “Keep that safe, the sky girl may want it back.” And then he is gone, slips back into the glowering trees as thunder cracks overhead.

 

For a long time, the Commander stands frozen, hand still lifted and shivering in the air, tightening around the metal. She wills herself to be still, to master the vibrating of her muscles, the roar crawling in her lungs, constricting her breath. Her shoulders feel like they might crack under the pressure to stand firm in her responsibilities, her duty, for the urge to spring forward into the forest and end the search herself makes her jaw grind, makes her hold her breath only to release it in sharp bursts. A snarl builds on her lips, eyes vengeful and worried, flashing with agony. It’s unbearable, this battle raging between her ribs, but she will bear it. She stands immobilized, nearly torn apart, but remains scarcely stitched together by her obligations as Commander.

 

Slowly, she lets her hand fall to her side. She inhales a heaving breath, like coming up for air after battling a riptide. She stares into the blackness.

 

“Where are you?” she whispers to the trees, to the cold wind. Rain falls, drips down her chin, the lengths of her fingers.

 

“Where are you?”

 

———

 

**From the sky—**

Clarke has to move quickly, can’t afford to give her opponent too much time to work out her strategy. She pushes her Rook forward on the fractured service, her pieces’ spaces more the color of tea than the bone-white they should be. Her opponent, an old pelt-trader who refused to give his name, runs a weathered hand over grey whiskers. Dirt under his fingernails. His eyes lift to Clarke’s for a brief moment, as if to read her intent there instead of within the careful arrangement of her pieces. When he finds nothing, they drop back to the service. With a deep breath, he pushes forward his last remaining knight, and growls, “Check.”

 

Brow furrowing, Clarke leans forward to study the move. It looks like her plan may work, but she’s still unsure. The game of chess has changed on the ground. In the sky it remained constant, but here it was reborn, its rules and patterns shifting, deconstructing, and rebuilding again along with the entirety of the human world. Since leaving Camp Jaha, Clarke has studied these new rules, learned the tactics and the strategies for surviving this version of chess. She’d found willing opponents in places like this one—trading outposts in the smaller grounder settlements, places where people like her tended to concentrate, people who didn’t want too many questions asked, too many eyes following them. She made her visits as infrequent as possible, but whenever she did stumble inside one of these torch-lit halls, usually half-starved and reeking of earth and filth and hypocrisy, she couldn’t resist having a game.

 

A few more seconds of deliberation and Clarke sits back, fighting the smile that threatens to split across her face. This is going to work. Quickly, she nudges her King, positioning him for her final move. A trap.

 

Now it’s the Pelter’s turn to lean forward. A jumble of Trigedasleng words spills past his yellowing teeth.

 

“No talking,” Clarke warns, though it’s more from her lack of Trigedasleng than an unwillingness to hold conversation. She’d picked up more of the language over the months, but was still a daunting distance from fluency.

 

“Can’t talk or won’t talk?” asks the Pelter in English, surprising her.

 

“Where did you learn the warrior’s tongue?”

 

“Wasn’t always in this trade,” he says in a voice like gravel, “I fought in the Mountain wars before the current Commander ascended.”

 

Clarke feels her hands tighten around the edges of her seat at the mention of the Commander, the familiar blaze that erupts in her veins and floods across her skin like wildfire. Betrayal like poison, like drowning. The name electrocutes her, and she struggles to remain still in her seat across from the Pelter. Such a violent reaction would arouse suspicion, and she can’t afford to stop this match. They’re playing for possessions—the Pelter wants Clarke’s buck knife, an old tool of war given to her by Lincoln, and Clarke wants the Pelter’s dinner, a big slab of salted venison sitting on a pile of potatoes. Her hunger outweighs her anger. So like her guilt, Clarke pushes thought of the Commander away, an old wound that reopens and bleeds every few days, but the pain of which she’s gotten used to bearing.

 

“They let you leave the ranks, just like that?” she asks with mock disinterest.

 

“This Commander did. Says warriors should choose for themselves how they serve their people. And it is not always through war that we find our usefulness.”

 

“Seems pretty indulgent to me.”

 

“ _Heda_ is young, but her advisors serve her well. She was wise to abandon the Skaikru at the Mountain.” He moves his Bishop this time, a long diagonal run. “Check.”

 

Clarke looks down at the pieces, her gaze dark. “Many would disagree with you, old man. Many would say it was weakness that led her to abandon her allies on the brink of battle.”

 

“Allies?” the Pelter scoffs. “Sky demons that have killed senselessly, invaded our lands, burned our trees, slaughtered our children? _Heda_ had two options: save more by leaving, or stay and die fighting for enemies that have done nothing but lay like a pestilence in the corner of her dominion. And in the end, it worked out in her favor. She let her enemies defeat her enemies.”

 

It takes every drop of self-control for Clarke to not speak the venomous words filling up her mouth, rushing up from her lungs and the pit of her stomach. Instead they sit boiling behind her teeth, tasting of metal and blood and betrayal. She rolls her neck, sucks in a deep breath through her nose. Returns to her task.

 

“I think,” she growls, words low and precise, “that leaders must honor their allies. Promises made must be kept; words of fellowship spoken in peace must be made true in battle. And above all, I believe that if you betray your friends, then they will come back your cruelest enemies.” She slides her Queen forward, slow and deliberate. “Check Mate.”

 

Another victory. She’s come to loathe the feeling. The Pelter raises his hands to his head, disbelief plain on his face. Jaw slack, his eyes move to meet Clarke’s, who sits letting the sting of her words and maneuvers sink in. Then she starts forward.

 

“I told you,” she reminds him, grabbing his plate of smoked venison, “you should have let me play the black pieces.”

 

Clarke leaves him sitting at the table, staring fruitlessly at the chess service. Moving past the fire, she settles into an old armchair in the corner of the outpost that smells of dust and decay, all four of its legs missing. She bites into the meat. The flavor almost makes her whimper she’s so hungry. Three nights she’s gone without solid food, only the odd tubers and roots that tasted of soil and tepid water. The meat is like a warm fire during a storm, like the comfort of her father’s arms after a solar flare warning—relieving, exquisite.

 

With a grumble the old man moves off, rejoins his group at the opposite side of the room. A few glances are thrown her way, glowering with a reluctant kind of respect. Clarke chews slowly, eyeing them, ready to grab the dagger in her boot at the sign of any movement for retaliation. Or recognition. For the most part, her disguise has allowed her to inhabit the edges of Clan lands unnoticed and unrecognized. Her hair is darker, redder, since she found the mulberries a few kilometers from the Ark crash site. But still, she must remain always on her guard, always watching those watching her. No sign of ill will comes from the other outpost occupants, though, and after a few minutes she relaxes into the chair. Takes another large bite.

 

Her eyes return to the chess service. Pause on the black queen, standing tall amidst the carnage, the carved tips of her crown glowing like tiny embers in the firelight. An imperious piece. Merciless. For a long time Clarke stares, transfixed, at the Queen. Then she sets her plate down on the floor, the venison half-eaten, and looks away, sickened.

 

———

 

**From the earth—**

The moon has grown thinner. It hangs, like a thin crescent of molten glass, low on the horizon. A few clouds glower above it, bruised orange and red in the dusk. On the outskirts of a city named Polis, a handful of warriors spar beneath the russet colors left behind by the fallen sun.

 

A match wages fiercely between a young Captain and the Commander, wooden sparring sticks gripped and swung skillfully by each, cracking like gunfire as they meet in the air. Lexa spins left, bringing her stick around fast to meet the Captain’s, then ducks right to bring it back up. The Captain barely gets his practice stick up in time to block before she hammers him again, slicing, weaving, dancing her way to victory. Lexa is about to shove him to the ground when she sees it—an opening above her left shoulder, a weakness. The Captain sees it too and before she can twist out of the way, he brings up the butt end of his practice stick and strikes Lexa’s nose. The blow stings painfully, makes her eyes water, and she feels blood begin to trickle, but it’s not broken. She stumbles backward, instinct telling her duck as the Captain swings wildly in his advance, desperate to claim the match. The blow does nothing to weaken her own appetite for victory, though, and Lexa grits her teeth and digs in. Leaping forward, she executes a series of strikes too fast for the Captain to match. A symphony of cracks rings across the arena as Lexa combines attacks and parries with the ferocity of a second wind. Within seconds she has the Captain disarmed and sprawling before her. She taps his chest with the end of her stick.

 

“Ta,” she pants.

 

“Forgive me, _Heda_ ,” heaves the Captain, rising to his feet.

 

Lexa touches the back of her hand just below her nose, inspects the black blood that stains her skin when she removes it. Looking up at the Captain, she shakes her head. “There is nothing to forgive,” she says. “It was a good strike.” A smile small is permitted to touch her lips, and the sign of it brings relief to her opponent’s face.

 

“ _Heda,_ ” calls a familiar voice, and Lexa turns to find Titus approaching the arena. He beckons her join him some distance away.

 

Lexa lets her wooden practice stick fall slowly to her side, brow drawing into a frown. His presence is a nuisance, an interruption to a part of her day that belongs solely to her. An hour of self-focus, precision, finding a balance in both body and mind achieved only through physical exhaustion. It brings her peace. But the Fleimkeepa knows this, knows that this training is an escape that keeps her strong, and so he would not interrupt if it were not important.

 

Lexa wipes at her brow, hands her practice stick off to one of her Captains. She grabs a towel hanging on a wooden post, dabs gingerly at her nose. Titus leads her out of earshot, to an outcropping of rock that overlooks the city.

 

The Commander folds her arms over her chest, regards him behind wary eyes. “I don’t know how many times I have to tell you, Titus, but my exercise regimen is not an activity you are required to oversee.”

 

Titus nods, his mouth set in a grim line. He seems to brace himself, inhales deeply. “I come to report movement of the Azgeda troops on our northern border.” The words are barely out of his mouth before Lexa sighs, weary of having this debate again and again. “As predicted, they have advanced closer and show no signs of honoring the Peace Boundary.”

 

“You interrupted my training for news I could have assumed myself?”

 

Titus does not relent: “There are nearly six dozen children in Polis as it stands, and every Nightblida born to our lands. Now is not the time for recklessness or leniency.” The words are meant to aggravate. Thorns intended to prick her skin, make her growl. And her eyes do snap to his, snarling, but she does not take the bait. “Now we must act with prudence, with our people and their prosperity in mind. Show the Ice Queen that you will not tolerate such hostile behavior from members of your Coalition. Shut the gates.”

 

Unable to stand still, the Commander begins to pace. All thought leaps to Roan. To the girl from the sky he is meant to deliver. She feels her ribcage constrict around the organ beating in her chest, its threadbare defenses.

 

“Ice Nation troops stand only a week’s march from Polis’s gates. We’ve waited long enough!”

 

“The Ice Queen would not dare bring her armies across the Boundary. She knows Polis is a holy city.”

 

“You of all people,” he murmurs. Lexa turns, finds him staring at her like he would a rabbit caught in a snare. “You of all people doubt how far the Ice Queen will go? How far she will stoop to weaken you?”

 

Lexa prowls before him. Memories of bloody sheets, blank, staring eyes gripped between her hands, how she had screamed, how she had wept, flash gruesomely in her mind’s eye. “Careful,” she warns the Fleimkeepa, her voice low and dangerous. “Her death served its purpose. But I will not tolerate her memory being used as a cheap threat to advance your agenda.”

 

“My agenda is only to keep this city safe, _Heda_ ,” the Fleimkeepa fumes, stepping closer. Lexa lifts her chin, considers the man before her. Sees how he trembles, how close he is to losing control. “To keep _you_ safe. Everything we have worked for, how close we have come in our efforts with the Light, I cannot bear the thought of losing it all to something as crude as another war.“

 

“Then send Scouts if you must, but the gates are to remain open.”

 

From the corner of her eye, she sees Titus spread his arms. “What is there to scout?” he cries. “Her intentions could not be clearer. She bears the weapons of war, brings an army of nearly two thousand strong to our borders. It is even rumored that the Horse Clan outfitted part of her cavalry!”

 

This gives Lexa pause, and her eyes drag back to the Fleimkeepa, jaw tightening.

 

“Lexa, please, if I must I will beg—”

 

The Commander sighs again, resumes her pacing. “Your fear clouds your judgment, Titus. And if what you say is true, then I will deal with the Horse Clan at the Assembly in five days time.”

 

“Azgeda move, armed and bloodthirsty, on Polis and still you refuse to hear reason! Instead, you wait for Prince Roan to bring—”

 

“ _Enough_!” Lexa rounds on the Fleimkeepa, eyes blazing and imperious. “Yes, I wait for Prince Roan,” she seethes, “and I will continue to wait until the Azgeda are raising ladders to my walls! I will wait until the Commanders before me _beg_ me to yield. I will wait until the stars pour from the sky and Armageddon comes again before I _close those gates._ ” She steps close to Titus, green eyes like shards of seaglass, hard and sharp. “This is my will. And you will obey it. I will not let Clarke of the Sky People fall into the hands of the Ice Nation. To do so, I fear, would be to make all our struggles to bring peace, all the blood shed and turmoil suffered, mean nothing. I cannot risk an alliance struck between the Sky People and Azgeda. Is that clear?” The Fleimkeepa’s eyes have fallen to the ground, his displeasure carved into the furrows of his brow. Lexa tilts her head so she can catch his eye. “Nod that you understand,” she commands.

 

Stiffly, Titus lifts his head, looks her straight in the eye, and nods.

 

“Good, then I will see you this evening for our dinner with the Skaikru delegation,” she instructs curtly, her dismissal clear. Titus stares at her, a thousand protestations pass over his expression, but the severity of Lexa’s own keeps him from voicing them. Instead he clamps down his jaw and with a bow so fleeting it borders on disrespectful, whirls around and retreats down the path leading to the tower. Lexa watches him disappear, fists still clenched at her sides. A beat passes. Her eyes lift to the sunburnt horizon, past the distant hills and into the darkening sky. She stares unblinking, as if to see past the stars and galaxies and through time itself. A pair of light footsteps shakes her from her musings and she turns. Hands clasp behind her back.

 

“What is it, Indra?”

 

The Trikru General steps forward. “The hour grows late. We should retire for the evening, _Heda_.”

 

Lexa does not stir, remains still as stone, eyes watching, searching, anything but Polis. “Answer me honestly. Do you think I’m making a mistake,” she turns, gaze meeting Indra’s, “leaving those gates open?”

 

The General is silent for a long moment. Shadows lengthen beneath her elegant cheekbones, darken the already dark tattoos along her temple. “I think,” she finally says, her words thoughtful, “that the decision to break the alliance with the Sky People was a double-edged sword. Many lives were saved with such a choice, difficult as it was. But with the defeat of one enemy, came the rising of two more in its ashes. If Clarke falls into the hands of Azgeda, and if the Ice Queen’s cunning poisons her, there may be a new alliance between the Skaikru and the Ice Nation. If that comes to pass then I fear we may have created a new Mountain. And one that can move in daylight.” The General hazards a step forward. Dark eyes bore into Lexa’s, steady, as if to feed her strength through a look, a reassurance there. “I think keeping the gates open is not only wise, but a necessity, _Heda_.”

 

Though she knows she does not need it, the Commander feels Indra’s support expand deep in her lungs, a fresh breath, invigorating and crisp. It clears her head. Lexa steps to move past the General, but pauses at her shoulder, places a hand there. Indra meets her eyes, and the undercurrent between them deepens, old and enduring as the forest. Comradeship grown long before Lexa became Commander. “You will join me at my table tonight with the Skaikru,” Lexa says, enough of a query in her tone that Indra knows she may refuse. Lexa knows she won’t.

 

“You honor me,” replies the General, dipping her head.

 

Her hand slips from Indra’s shoulder and she offers her a quick, rare smile. “Good,” she sighs. “Good.” She nods her head toward the arena. “Come, I would have one more spar before the delegation arrives.” A wry smile twists on Indra’s lips and the General moves off, eyes alight with the prospect of dueling her Commander.

 

Lexa follows a few paces behind, thoughts already returning to her quarrel with Titus. She knows his fears, knows them like she knows the lines of her own palm. In her heart, she knows that she shares them. But there is truth in what she said to him there, too. The logic she conveyed to the Fleimkeepa is not flawed. But there is something that lies deeper than logic, the rationality. Something she cannot explain with words or strategies or reason. It transcends higher, reaches deeper, it is the truth of all things. It is the force that binds the heavens, the iron deep in the mountain. Bedrock.

_I turned my back on her once. I will not do it again._

 

Lexa rolls her shoulders, grabs a practice stick and squares off from her General. She stands resolute, unbreakable.

 

———

 

**From the sky—**

“All you people are liars.”

 

The man named Roan drops the offered water canteen, his expression haughty. “You’re dehydrated.”

 

“You think I’m going to drink from the canteen you haven’t touched all day?”

 

“Then faint,” he grunts. “What do I care? I’ll force the water down your throat while you’re unconscious.” He flashes Clarke a condescending grin. “Will probably be easier that way.”

 

He’d come in the night, a wraith without clan or creed. Clarke had been expecting him. She had caught glimpses of him for weeks, following her between trading posts. She’d circle back to retrace her steps and find him kneeling in nooks and corners of the forest she had just abandoned, sniffing the air like a wolf would seek out its prey. Eyes always moving, searching. She could not decide if this captor was cruel or kind, perhaps caught somewhere in the vague country between, for when he finally came for her it was only a blink after an hour of indulgence, human companionship, of contact Clarke didn’t know she needed until Niylah’s fingers began tending her wounds. A brief moment that burned bright, before it was snuffed out. She slipped out of Niylah’s tent and straight into his waiting hands. A gag placed between her teeth and a bag pulled over her eyes, and she was again consumed by the darkness to which she was fast growing accustomed.

 

Clarke swipes the water container from him and gulps it down, her gaze challenging as it bores into his. When she hands it back, it’s nearly empty. Roan gives her a satisfied nod. He dumps more kindling on their small fire. The light stretches burning fingers farther outward, illuminates the pine needles and dirt upon which they sit shivering. Roan brought them to a small cave close to one of the Mountain’s entrances, too close for Clarke’s liking. The proximity brings goosebumps to her skin that won’t retreat, a prickle at the back of her neck that keeps her fidgeting. Thankfully, Roan builds a good fire and has it snapping and breathing heat on her face within a quarter of an hour. Keeps the shadows at bay.

 

She’s been with him for four days now. Days spent tramping through dense woodlands, fording rivers, skirting the feet of mighty mountains, never stopping, always moving, occasionally hiding from fishermen, hunters, even some children from a small Trikru village. Despite being a prisoner, Clarke kept her wits about her, catalogued the tracks on the ground, watched the trees shift from twinkling aspens to young saplings and finally widen and swell into towering pines. Marked the village boundaries they passed, the outposts. She took in every detail she could to keep track of where they were, the direction in which they were heading. And the only person who looked over their shoulder more than Clarke, was Roan.

 

The farther they went the more aware Clarke became of her captor’s behaviors. He moved with unrelenting purpose, as if some unseen force were driving him forward. He seemed keen to keep their presence unnoticed as they journeyed on, to move through the forest unseen. Every morning he covered their fire pit with pine needles and rocks, made it seem as if nothing had burned there at all. At night he hid them in gulleys, in ruins overrun by ivy creepers and moss. He traveled light, only a bow and quiver of arrows and small pack on his back. Outlandish scars lined his temples, carved into symmetrical shapes. Beautiful in the same way they were hideous. It was on their third night that Clarke learned he was Ice Nation, but she made no mention of it. The knowledge, though, did leave her sleepless, too uneasy to close her eyes, her mind too busy drawing parallels between all the descriptions she’d heard spoken of the Azgeda and her captor. He seemed just as wary of her, and also refused to close his eyes. Instead they waged small battles across the fire, neither willing to trust the other enough to sleep, both too full of contempt to rest.

 

Tonight will be no different.

 

Silence presses in, makes Clarke uneasy. Roan found a small cave this night, a welcome respite from the outdoor elements. She looks up at the rock walls, dripping water. Strange blue lights speckle the dark cavern ceiling, a tiny night sky brightened by insects that had never seen the stars.

 

“They’re glowworms,” says Roan, watching her crane her neck upwards, an innocence in her wonder that was quickly dying.

 

“Those are worms?”

 

Her captor nods.

 

“They look like galaxies.” Clarke smiles slightly to herself, mind flashing to many nights spent with her face pressed to the glass windows of the Ark, the infinite universe beyond. After a moment she drops her eyes, crosses her arms over her chest. It’s been getting colder every night, a deep kind of cold that drapes over your skin and thickens there, sinks into your bones. It’s unfamiliar. “The climate is changing,” she observes. “Why?”

 

“Winter,” is his only reply.

 

 _Winter._ She’s heard the word, read about it briefly. Words that described immeasurable cold. Pictures of the earth blanketed in white. It takes her a minute, but eventually she remembers the name for that white. “Will it snow?”

 

“Soon.”

 

“Is it very cold?”

 

A smirk washes over Roan’s face. “Yes.” He leans forward, his expression reflecting a rare, mild sort of interest. A jerk of his head in a general direction upward, toward the night sky. “What was it like up there?”

 

It’s Clarke’s turn to be brusque. “Cold.”

 

This seems to puzzle him. “Cold?”

 

“Not like this. A manufactured sort of cold, stagnant. Did you ever go inside the Mountain?”

 

“No.”

 

Clarke shrugs. “It was cold like that inside the Mountain too.”

 

“Well, we don’t have to worry about that place anymore, thanks to you.” He sits back, resting his hands on his knees. “If only you could have melted the Trikru too.”

 

A glare is exchanged between them before Clarke asks, “What is it that exists between Azgeda and Trikru? Why do you hate each other so much?”

 

Roan pokes at the fire, waves away the sparks it spits back at him. “Ah, the list of wrongs grows long and laborious, on both sides. Many decades ago, Trikru pushed the Ice Nation farther north for want of more resources. We were unprepared for the winter in that new territory to which we were so cruelly banished, and the cold nearly killed half our countrymen. We retaliated by setting fire to some of their summer crops the following year. Starvation took many of their children. And so began a pattern of war. The battles go back and forth; we lost ground, they lost villages; we were pushed farther north to more hostile country, we filled their wells with blood. The savagery Trikru bred for Azgeda flesh only seemed to worsen, grow insatiable, until finally we began to retreat north on our own. But not without growing a savagery of our own, a deep and abiding thirst for revenge, to take back what was rightfully ours.”

 

“And now’s the time to exact your vengeance and reclaim your lands, after all these years?”

 

“No, it’s not the lands we crave.”

 

“Then what is it?”

 

“To take back something that was stolen from us. Something the Trikru discovered to which they had no legitimate claim.”

 

“And what’s that?”

 

Roan fixes her with a level gaze over the fire, as if calculating whether she is worthy knowing this information, his Clan’s deepest wound. “The Flame.”

 

“The what?”

 

Another smile creases his face. “You really know nothing, do you sky girl?”

 

Clarke reaches down, yanks up an old dead piece of grass from the ground. Begins twisting it between absent fingers. “Guess not.”

 

“All you need to know is that the Commander you know took something from my people that we are willing to wage war to get back, are willing to bleed until the rivers run red to recover.”

 

Clarke says nothing. But for the first time, she feels the first tie of empathy with this man. His wounds go deep, go past flesh and bone and plunge into something else entirely, something less corporeal but far more powerful. And the same person who inflicted his wounds, inflicted her own: the Commander of Trikru. Again, she’s found a way to creep into Clarke’s thoughts. It makes her want to scream.

 

“She screwed me over too, you know,” Clarke murmurs. Almost a confession, made not to Roan, but herself. It stings, acknowledging she’d been fooled, remembering the agony in the Commander’s eyes as she abandoned Clarke to die. The shame hidden in her unyielding self-control.

 

Roan’s gaze lifts to her from across the fire, the flames cutting out dark hollows beneath his eyes. “You’re talking about the Mountain,” he grumbles.

 

Clarke nods.

 

“The Commander’s weakness made you a legend. You should be grateful.”

 

“Unless it comes with retribution, gratitude isn’t what I’m feeling towards the Commander.” A familiar nausea returns to Clarke’s stomach as her memory flashes with scenes from that night. The painted faces, howls of war, how Lexa’s hungry eyes had caught the torchlight, blazing. Intoxicating. Disgusted, Clarke tosses the grass into the fire, wishes she could do the same with her memories. Wishes the fire would consume the fading part of her, which, as much as she tries to strangle it, still seems to ache at the thought of the Commander.

 

The flames untangle the knots she twisted into the dead grass. She watches as the fire eats up her offering. “We had a deal,” Clarke growls, unable to help herself, remembering. “The Commander made me think—”

 

She cuts herself off, breathless at all the things Lexa had made her think. How she was a natural-born leader, how brave she was standing beside the Commander listening to the thunderous roar of her army, the quiet between them, the riptide between them, the taste of her. Clarke brings her knees to her chest, wraps her arms around them tightly. Holds herself together. “She made me think a lot of things. I was an idiot to believe any of them. I won’t make the mistake again.”

 

For a long moment Roan says nothing. Then, quietly, “The Azgeda say much the same.”

 

Both stare into the fire, silent. Both know it burns far weaker than the flames eating up their own hearts.

 

———

 **From the earth—**  

 

“I _will not_ listen to a lecture on loyalty from a Clan that trades with Skaikru. They are not our people, they will never be our people.” It is only ten minutes into the Assembly and already the fractures within Lexa’s coalition are beginning to crack and bleed. The current speaker, an Ambassador from the distant Horse Clan, turns his attention to the Commander, teeth seething and bared. “In fact, it is the Ingranronakru’s position that Skaikru should have been banished from _Heda’s_ lands the moment the Mountain fell!”

 

Another Ambassador leans forward, younger. “Advice that dwells in the past is of no use to us here. The Skaikru rid us of our most formidable enemy. Peace should be our objective, Riker, so let it be brought on the backs of horses that can plow their fields, bear their warriors, carry harmony between our Clans.”

 

Riker rises to his feet, eyes burning with fury. “I will be dead before I see a single horse born of our stock in the hands of the Skaikru.”

 

Argument erupts on both sides of the Chamber. Hackles raised, old wounds spilling old blood onto fresh battlefields.

 

“ _Never trust the Skai!_ ”

 

Too frustrated, and bored, frankly, to mediate, Lexa raises a hand to her temple and massages slow circles into her skin, eyes rolling at the venomous insults and accusations being tossed between her Assembly ambassadors. It is only when gloved hands begin to grip sword hilts that the Commander feels the first impulse to intervene, but before her lips can even form a word, the argument comes to an abrupt halt as the Chamber doors boom open. A shard of sunlight accompanies Titus into the room, his long robes billowing about his ankles as he approaches the throne. The raucous shouting dims as he sweeps past the Assembly. The Commander does not drop her hand from her temple, though her eyes watch his approach like a lioness watches her hunter from the confines of a cage.

 

“ _Heda,_ ” he states. His gaze lifts to meet hers, and there is an uncertainty there, an anticipation, that puts Lexa on edge. “The Prince has fulfilled your bargain. He stands with Clarke of the Sky People at the gates of Polis.”

 

Lexa’s hand drops from her brow, the bones and muscles of her face settling into a mask of perfect indifference. She eyes the Fleimkeepa for a long moment. The room stands suspended, holding its breath, its occupants waiting for their Commander’s word, the Commander trying to soothe her own stumbling heartbeat. It hammers so loud in her chest she’s surprised the others can’t hear it. All those eyes fixed on her, but she will not crumble beneath the pressure of her station. She will feel nothing. It means nothing. A magnificent lie. But in that small space of time, Lexa feels her spirit scramble to preserve itself, throw up eroded and familiar battlements, digs a grave deep in her ribcage and puts Clarke there, never to be unearthed.

 

Her next words come out level. Calm. “Then bring her to me.”

 

Titus bows quickly and sweeps from the room, four guards on his heels.

 

“This Assembly is dismissed, we will reconvene in the morning,” Lexa informs the room, her voice low. No one moves, no one blinks.

 

“ _Out._ ”

 

The sound of chairs scraping stone. The muted clink of steel against leather as the Ambassadors rise from their seats and drift out of the Assembly Chamber, heads pressed close together, murmuring in hushed Trigedasleng at the news of Clarke’s arrival. Lexa sits back in her chair as the room empties, though she signals Indra and her two personal sentries remain.

 

Stillness settles, heavy with the knowledge that Clarke is so close. A familiar knot begins to coil in Lexa’s stomach, a knot that had slowly loosened as the months slipped by without word or sighting. Like a tide, the relief had come to her shores inch by inch. The slip of the knot painstaking in its stunted unraveling. But every morning she woke a little less a prisoner to Clarke’s memory. Until now. It comes back so quickly it nearly snatches the air from her lungs and the Commander is left frozen in her chair, paralyzed with relief, with fear. With guilt.

 

An unconscious hand passes over her face, holds her own jaw. _She’s been found._

 

Lexa’s eyes close. She inhales a deep breath, chest aching.

 

If only her heart were stone.


	2. Chapter 2

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Apologies for the long delay. Summer means field season for phd candidates, so I've been traveling quite a bit. Hopefully this installment makes up for it.
> 
> Again, comments and kudos are much appreciated.
> 
> Enjoy xx

**From the sky—**

They put her in a chamber on the seventeenth floor, the crumbling belly of the tower of Polis. The room sits in a curious state of collapse and luxury combined. Cement floors cracked and bruised from the shudder of bombs dropped long ago. A large mirror shattered on one of the walls, its glass mosaicked with delicate lines like thin ice splintering underfoot. Walls with holes that reveal copper wire guts and a wooden skeleton of support beams and scaffolding. But within this crumbling chamber sit items of comfort and leisure Clarke had believed to be all but extinct. A bed draped in thick furs and linens so clean she nearly wept when she collapsed into a deep and resentful sleep the night of her arrival. Flames spit and hiss from a fireplace between two large windows, logs stacked neatly off to one side. Books line the shelves on one wall—books with words of biology, politics, foreign cities now blown to dust, philosophy and medicine. Dated, but they pass the time.

 

Off to one side of her chamber is a small alcove where there sits a large washbasin lined with oils and salts that smell of pine and sage. Lavender. Clarke has spent more time than she’d like to admit soaking in the hot water, working out stains and dirt from skin scrubbed raw. Head leaned back against one end, eyes closing underneath the comfort of the water, the exhaustion seeping from her bones. A vanity stands close to one of the alcove’s windows, holding a mirror she avoids looking at and a few skin balms. And by the grace of whatever brimstone god created and destroyed this world, there’s a hairbrush.

 

She’d seen her captor only once in the last four days. They’d brought her to the _Heda_ the moment she arrived in Polis, shoved her to her knees before a Commander rimmed in light. Like she came to Clarke out of the sun. It had been a shock, a revelation, to learn it had been Lexa that unleashed the hounds that had hunted Clarke for nearly a fortnight. That it was Lexa that put the swollen price on her head. She’d stood, trembling and seething before the Commander in a wide room lit by torchlight, a familiar throne of branches and elegant spears behind the Trikru leader. It was there she learned Roan to be of royal Azgeda blood, learned of his banishment and his deal with the Commander. And above all, it was there Clarke learned what it meant to truly loathe, to look into steely green eyes, both terrible and imperious in their beauty, and feel contempt that sank past flesh and settled deep in her bones.

 

In the past four days that contempt had not dulled, had not weakened, but only spread, infected every thought, dream, movement and reflection like a virus left to its own devices. Devouring, unstoppable. Clarke prowls her room like a lion kept in a cage, left only with her hate and her guilt for company. The knowledge that her hunter sits in a throne fifteen more floors above her like a splinter burrowing deeper and deeper into her flesh.

 

The winter sun hangs low over Polis, a white hole burning in the cloud-cover. On the morning of Clarke’s fifth day in her strange prison she stands at her window, watching her breath leave her lips like ghosts on the cold air. It’s quiet. Until a knock comes at her door, and she frowns, unaccustomed to visitors outside of the brief intervals when they bring meals and promptly leave.

 

Clarke turns to see who comes at this hour, feels her brow furrow with surprise. “Do they just let you walk around wherever you please?” she asks, watching Roan close the door behind him.

 

He smiles that familiar crooked grin, the one that reminds Clarke of a fox. “Not without an escort deserving of an Azgeda lord.” He jerks his head back towards the door. “There are six guards standing outside.”

 

“Just six? They must not be too worried.”

 

Roan flashes her a smirk. “A little bird told me you haven’t left this room in four days. Seems you haven’t cracked yet,” he comments, surmising her general state of being with amusement. “At least you’ve showered. But looks like you’re close to throwing yourself out a window so a change of scenery might do you good.”

 

Clarke pauses, turns. Immediately on the scent. Eyes like shards of glass. “Did she put you up to this?”

 

“Put me up to what?”

 

“Getting me to leave.” Roan tilts his head, not understanding. “I can only leave this room,” Clarke explains, her tone studiously level, “if my intended destination is the throne room.”

 

“Well, for starters, we don’t call it a ‘Throne Room’. It’s called _Fleimblida Kip_ , the Bloodflame Keep, a sacred place. And that throne? Lexa’s addition, wasn’t always there.”

 

Clarke rolls her eyes at his posturing. “No, probably not, but I’m sure it was a throne of ice when Nia was up there sitting on it, right?”

 

Roan just smiles. “I heard you spat on her,” and he breaks down into a fit of laughter, shoulders shaking with mirth.

 

A smile tugs at the corner of Clarke’s mouth. “Seemed like the right thing to do at the time.”

 

“And now?”

 

Clarke shrugs.

 

“A greeting like that,” Roan shakes his head, “I’m surprised you’re still standing here with a tongue.”

 

“Do you have a point?”

 

“Not really. Just that I know she’s executed men for lesser things. You must have really gotten under her skin.” He fixes her with a knowing stare.

 

“Fuck off, Roan.” And Clarke turns away, feeling any reprieve at the human contact melt away under his insufferable teasing.

 

“Ah, come on, Clarke,” the Prince says, spreading his hands, “I just came to say hello. I miss our little campfire chats.”

 

“I don’t.”

 

She steps close to one of the windows, folds her arms over her chest. Stills, there. Polis bustles beneath her, a riot of bartering and selling, children skipping through the crowded streets, smoke and steam rising like dervishes in the cold winter air from street vendors offering stews and hot ciders. Clarke nearly enjoys the sight, tries to let herself get swept up in the goings-on of strangers. A moment of peace.

 

“It doesn’t have to be this way, you know.”

 

She notices the change in his tone, the familiar darkness that usually threads Roan’s words together. _Now we’re getting to it._

 

Clarke sighs, drops her eyes. “You’re going to have to be more blunt with me, Roan.”

 

The Prince joins her at the window. “There’s a fire burning. Close. Just over that ridge. It burns for you.”

 

“Still not helpful.”

 

“There’s an Azgeda force of about two thousand strong standing on the other side of the Peace Boundary. By sundown on the day the moon is full, Polis will once again be ruled by the Ice Queen.”

 

The flare of panic that blooms in Clarke’s chest comes unbidden, startles her, how bound she still feels to the Trikru. Deeper, to Lexa. She shoves it back. “They’re going to attack the city?”

 

Roan nods. “Lexa’s time is going to come to a sudden and violent end. Same as it began.” He shifts to look Clarke straight in the eye. “And if you cooperate, stay out of the way, then there might be something in it for you that the Queen has to offer.”

 

Refusal makes Clarke back away from the window, stand before the fire to ward off the chill. “No. I’m not getting involved. I won’t be caught in the middle of this, between Lexa and her enemies, not again.”

 

“Good,” Roan says curtly, and he moves toward her door. “Then our business is concluded.”

 

Clarke balks at his dismissal of her, any drop of independence she may still have. “I could tell her, you know,” she threatens without conviction. “What do I have to lose?”

 

“Vengeance. Strength, power. The things that make the world go round. And why would you do that? She left you to die. She made you do things that prevent you from sleeping at night. You could return the favor, if she didn’t already know.”

 

“She knows?” Clarke asks, disbelief lowering her voice.

 

“Of course she knows.”

 

“Then why doesn’t she do something?”

 

“Because she underestimates our allies.” Roan grabs the door handle, but before he turns the handle, recommends softly, “Stay out of it, sky girl. Winter’s at Polis’s doorstep. And it may come bearing gifts for you.”

 

Then he swings open the door and disappears behind it, leaving Clarke alone again.

 

**———**

 

**From the earth—**

 

She is stopped where she is always stopped. Right at the bridge. Shining, iridescent before a city beaming with light, unbroken by the bombs that destroyed the world. Lexa pants before it, hands on her knees, sword dripping with blood. She glances behind her. Eyes always moving, scanning the treeline for the beasts and men that infest those woods. It took years to make it through the forest, years of practice, trial and error, planning her trek to the last step with Titus. When she first broke through the trees and saw the city soar before her she could hardly believe she’d made it—farther than any previous Commanders before her. Could hardly believe it to be real. It took a few moments to remember it wasn’t.

 

Now she stands before it again, in the same place as the time before, and the time before that. Prevented by some invisible force that has prevented her from crossing the bridge innumerable times. She shifts her weight from foot to foot, listening to the drip of blood fall from her sword and onto the pavement. Lexa picks up a small stone. The last time she was here she’d finally made a breakthrough, chipped away at the defenses of the city to reveal a clue. She tosses the stone forward and watches as a blaze of light erupts just when the stone passes the first pole on the bridge. Like a great electrical curtain, it shoots upward to the blue sky, tears it asunder. Lexa’s eyes drag back down. Relief courses through her. It’s still there. The small box within which sits a small needle. On the last run she’d offered it her blood, let it prick her finger and swallow its tribute. But nothing came of it. The energized wall did not lessen, but she’d only tried it once. Perhaps this time would be different.

 

Before she can take a step forward to try again, a bloodcurdling howl reaches her ears. An unearthly sound, neither living nor dead, but caught somewhere in the void between. Lexa whirls around and she catches sight of movement between the trees.

 

“No,” she murmurs. But one by one, they emerge from the forest, bearing torches and guns and all instruments of humankind’s destruction in their bloody fists. Lexa lets out a roar of frustration and she drops her sword. Her hand reaches for her neck, fingers groping to press the tattoo stained into the skin above the top of her spine.

 

“Pull me out!” she cries. She squeezes the tattoo, trying to eject herself. “ _Pull me out Titus! Pull me out!_ ”

 

A familiar boom quakes beneath her feet, cracks the world before her eyes as if it’s made of glass. She feels herself being torn away, struggling in the riptide of space and time as it compresses and expands again. Colors blur. Smoke and swell as if on fire, drag away and go dark. Then, light.

 

Lexa’s eyes spring open and she gasps for air, the light blinding as muffled voices buzz in her ears, their words incoherent. Her body heaves and shudders, the loss of blood severe, makes her feel thin as paper, immaterial.

 

“ _Heda_?”

 

She blinks rapidly, silhouettes bent over her. Her throat scratches when she tries to respond, tongue thick and useless in her mouth.

 

“ _Heda_? Can you hear me?”

 

Finally, Lexa croaks out, “I’m here.” A failure. Again. She doesn’t need to look at Titus to know he is thinking the same. It will take her three days to recover from this run. Three days of lost time.

 

Her vision clears and she sees the Fleimkeepa, face etched with concern, leaning over her to check her vitals. A hand slips beneath her neck and guides her mouth to a glass of water, makes her drink. She feels needles leave her skin where they were buried in her arms, taking her black blood as payment for her journey to that adorned and shining city. Breeding and crawling with evils and enemies that in this world she could neither see nor hear nor touch.

 

Slowly, Lexa rises from the table like she’s rising from her grave, slides off. Feels her legs shake as she tries to stand. Titus moves to help steady her, but she waves him off, impatient, frustrated. After a moment of bated breath, she straightens and takes an offered towel from one of her attendants. Wiping her brow of sweat, she murmurs, “I can’t keep doing this alone.”

 

“Yes, you can,” the Fleimkeepa insists, “you’re stronger than you think. When you’re inside it may feel overwhelming, but—”

 

“I—can’t—keep—doing—this— _alone_ ,” she snaps, whirling around. Eyes wide, flashing with her defeat, her bitter exhaustion. “Over and over and over again we’ve done this, Titus! I’ve gone as far as I can go on my own.”

 

“You must focus. The barrier _will_ open for you if you could just—”

 

“No, not just for me. I need another.”

 

“Then who?” he cries, feeding off her own irritation, the barrier against which they have been pitching themselves fruitlessly, the barrier that does not seem to be weakening no matter how many times Lexa enters the City of Light.

 

The Commander meets his gaze, steady. “You know exactly whom I need.”

 

“Lexa,” Titus tries in a gentle tone, “I’m not entirely convinced that Clarke…” He trails off when he sees the look on Lexa’s expression, the dare in her eyes to challenge her.

 

“She is the one that was prophesized by the First Commander. The one that fell from the sky.”

 

“There are hundreds of them that fell from the sky. How can you be sure that Clarke is the precise one we need?”

 

Lexa tosses the towel back to the attendant. “You doubt my ability to understand the Flame?” she asks quietly, a threat there. “To interpret the messages of the Commanders past?”

 

“That is not what I said.”

 

“But it is what you meant.” The Commander’s hands rise to her temples, rub soothing circles as her eyes close. “Everyone leave me,” she orders. When she reopens her eyes she finds the Fleimkeepa following the procession out of the Bleeding Room. “Not you,” she barks to Titus. “You stay.”

 

When the room has emptied, they face off, the Fleimkeepa and the Commander, so unfamiliar with finding themselves opposed, both trying to negotiate a way to reach the other. Lexa begins to pace, agitated with his obstinacy. His reductive assessment of why she insists on Clarke’s role in this. “You don’t trust me.”

 

“I don’t trust Clarke.”

 

“Her presence here is meant only to help me. I brought her to Polis only to help us achieve our goal.”

 

“Her presence here does nothing but keep you weak. She distracts you!”

 

“She _strengthens_ me,” Lexa explodes and it’s enough to give the Fleimkeepa pause, so unaccustomed to seeing Lexa lose her careful control, always so steady. “You cannot see what I see when I am in there,” and she gestures towards the table, towards the wires and intravenous connections that let her leave this world and enter another. “And so I don’t know how to make you understand. I am lost.” Lexa sighs, the weariness seeping back in. “The Flame says I need another. One who understands intelligence of a different kind.”

 

“But why Clarke?” asks Titus, gesturing helplessly. “What is it about Clarke that makes you think it is her the Flame calls for?”

 

“I don’t have an answer for you.” Lexa runs a hand through braided hair, tired and aching for sleep. “Not one of science or mathematics, not one of engineering or rationality. Only that I feel it is her.”

 

“Then if you need her, you must go speak with her. Force her to help you, she’s under your control now, _your_ prisoner.”

 

“I cannot force Clarke to do anything,” the Commander hisses. “And how do you propose I convince her to help me after what I’ve done? When she can barely stomach the sight of me?” She hears the crack in her voice, feels how it splinters beneath the surface, like a ravine widening in her chest. She knows it’s Clarke buried there, in that grave between her ribs in which she so desperately tried to banish her. Now she’s rattling those bones, fighting to claw her way out.

Titus seems to notice then, her struggle. His face softens, concedes something to her. He approaches her like he might approach a wounded animal. Careful steps, quiet eyes. Places kind hands along her temples. “Use your mind,” he instructs with a gentleness that makes Lexa’s throat catch. “Make her see. Make her understand. This isn’t about you. This isn’t about her. It’s not about what happened at the mountain. That lies in the past. What is happening now is a much bigger thing. And she is a part of it. Appeal to what is left that she still loves.”

 

“Her people,” the Commander concludes.

 

Titus nods. “Ensure the Skaikru’s safety, and Clarke may come around.”

 

He leaves her standing beside that old relic, the shuttle Polaris, half-burnt with fire and heat beyond reckoning. Lexa closes her eyes again, seeking balance. Gathering herself, adjusting. She rolls her shoulders, inhales a deep breath. Opens her eyes again with purpose. She knows what she must do.

 

**———**

**From the sky—**

 

Day seven. And still Clarke has not left the confines of her chamber. It’s bordering on a point of pride now, this obstinate refusal to do the Commander’s bidding. She imagines Lexa’s frustration, her resentment, radiating from that Bloodflame Keep like smoke from a building wildfire. Can practically feel it in the walls, though Clarke knows it is only her own imagining. Trying to out-wait Lexa would be like trying to out-wait the rock deep in the earth, out-wait the evaporation of the ocean. Eventually, Clarke knows she will crumble, but it helps to think she’s irritating the Commander, at the very least.

 

It’s nearly sundown, and as she has done for the last seven days, Clarke stands on her balcony to watch the sun disappear beneath the rim of the world, a book in hand. The last slice of the blood-red orb is almost faded when a door booms closed on the floor beneath her. A rattle that draws Clarke's attention downward. A familiar silhouette emerges on the balcony and Clarke feels every muscle in her body tense.

 

The Commander approaches the railing, settles against it with an ease that suggests she thinks she’s alone. For a long moment, Clarke considers leaving, recoiling at the sight of her. But contempt freezes her where she stands, and beneath that, an instinctive pull, like gravity.

 

“Looks like your forest is burning down,” she announces to the empty air. Eyes drop down to the balcony below, watch as the Commander jolts. Words like a lightning strike. Unexpected, crackling with a threat. She turns to look for the source of the voice, hand instinctively settling on the hilt of her blade. A moment of confusion and then green eyes lift upward, freeze when they settle on Clarke. The Commander’s been caught unawares, armor thrown aside, her careful walls laid down, and her eyes are wide and wild. They flash with fear and revelation. Affection buried there. Are plain with her despair. Are bare with her hope. The Commander blinks several times, rapidly, as if she had just stared into the sun.

 

Clarke lifts her eyebrows, arms crossing lazily over the stone railing.

 

Lexa’s lips part slightly, a sign, Clarke has learned, of genuine surprise. For a moment, it seems as if the Commander may leave, may flee, for her eyes dart from Clarke to the door leading back into the Tower. And then back again. Clarke watches her jaw clench, watches the conflict erupt like wildfire across her expression. Even from above she can see how Lexa wrestles with herself. The Commander demands Lexa leave, to salvage her strength, to be the steel, the ice, the river that does not stray from its course. Lexa demands the Commander stay, to heal their wounds, to be the scientist, the coordinates, the cartographer that leads them back to whatever they’d found. Neither of these contesters claims victory. Pride, in the end, keeps the Commander where she stands.

 

It takes her a moment, but Lexa does recover. Her gaze drops, returns to the horizon, smeared with smoke. She rests against her balcony’s railing with a casualness too practiced, too studied. It betrays her. Clarke can see the stiffness of her spine, how her hands grip the stones until they turn white. The tension is so thick Clarke can almost feel it settling onto her skin like a summer sweat, a kind of fever, suffocating and heady despite the winter chill. But it pleases her to know that her presence makes Lexa nervous.

 

After a long pause, the Commander replies coolly, “It will burn itself out.”

 

“You sure about that? It’s got a lot of fuel.”

 

Lexa doesn’t turn around, but Clarke sees her shoulders fall faintly, like a statue that’s held its position too long and shrugs with exhaustion. A smirk crawls across Clarke’s face at the Commander’s uneasiness, celebrates every tiny crack she manages to strike into those lofty walls surrounding Lexa.

 

“It’s the Ice Nation.” Lexa turns her head just enough for Clarke to make out her profile against the dusky light. “They come for _you_.”

 

Blue eyes narrow at this. A pang of worry flares in Clarke’s chest and her eyes snap back to the horizon, to the pillars of smoke rising just beyond the fringe of the forest. Roan had said they were coming for Lexa. For power.

 

“Me?”

 

“Yes.”

 

Clarke lifts her chin and straightens, frustrated. “What do you mean?”

 

The Commander shifts slowly, turns to face Clarke with an expression of perfect impassiveness. Whatever she had done in that small space of time when her back was to Clarke was almost worthy of applause. All surprise was gone. All concern, all regret, hope. Affection, banished. Even the usual haunt to her gaze had been dulled to only a glint. Clarke resents her ability to compartmentalize so well, so completely, and so she looks away, feeling suddenly and inexplicably like a child antagonizing Atlas.

 

Lexa leans with her back against the railing, gazing upward. “You are now a threat to every clan in this dominion. I should congratulate you, Clarke. You have achieved the kind of legendary standing many claw for their entire lives with only a single victory.”

 

All pretense, all cool indifference, evaporates from Clarke’s expression. “Yes, you should congratulate me. Because my spine didn’t crack under the weight of battle and blood. Because I did what you couldn’t—“ Clarke leans over the railing like a lion would try and swipe at its hunter between the bars of its cage, snarling, bristling, breaking, burning. “—I faced my enemies and defended my people with honor. With sacrifice! I did what you were too cowardly to do!” Lexa stands frozen, and Clarke sees the realization in her eyes, and the pain that blossoms at its knowing. “I _finished_ what you started,” and Clarke launches herself away from the balcony, slams the door behind her as she returns to her chamber.

 

Almost blind with anger, with agony, she spins and heaves the book at the vanity by the washbasin, shatters the mirror above it. Panting, Clarke stares at the shards that scatter the floor. Doesn’t bother to pick them up.

 

———

 

**From the earth—**

 

She goes to Clarke on the eighth day.

 

“What part of ‘I won’t see you’ wasn’t clear?” Clarke growls as the Commander sweeps into her room.

 

Lexa takes up post on the opposite side of the chamber, a purposeful distance. Stills there. Her heart pounds.

 

“I respected your wishes for a week, Clarke.”

 

“And you’ll continue respecting them. I have nothing to say to you.”

 

Lexa shakes her head. She’d forgotten the natural imperiousness to Clarke’s way of speaking, the flash of her eyes when she was angry, like currents of electricity. How could she have forgotten? “I think you have many things to say to me,” she ventures.

 

Clarke turns, her gaze almost murderous. “You don’t want to hear half of them.”

 

Silence expands between them, stifling and oppressive. Lexa keeps her eyes fixed on Clarke, refuses to look away, to surrender. All at once the memories she'd spent night after night banishing from her thoughts, her fingertips, her very bones, come rushing back like blood spilling from a wound. It almost takes her breath away, the memory of Clarke at her side as she galvanized and rallied her armies, the devotion that, at the start had only been reserved for her own people, but slowly began to bleed into her devotion to Lexa's, the way her hair gulped the sunlight at dusk, the feel of her hands at her waist, the taste of her. Lexa continues to stare at Clarke until it becomes to heavy a weight to bear, and she lifts her gaze to the window. 

 

“I did not come here to justify myself to you.”

 

“Oh good,” Clarke sighs with mock exhaustion, “that’s a relief. We’d be here all night.”

 

“Would you really have done differently?” Lexa asks swiftly, feeling herself bristle at the sky girl’s mockery.

 

“I thought you didn’t come here to justify yourself.”

 

“Sacrifice your people for the price of saving a few?” she presses, taking a step forward. “A hundred alive for a thousand dead?”

 

“Not all of us operate on such robotic calculations,” Clarke snaps. “Some of us honor the promises we make, the ties that bind. Looks like I sought my bonds of fellowship in the wrong place. Perhaps there are others that understand the meaning of an alliance.”

 

Lexa feels her heartbeat quicken, eyes widen. The insinuation is there, subtle as it is. “You would rather be in the hands of the Ice Queen?”

 

Clarke gives her a shrug, almost laughing. She begins to tick off her fingers: “Leksa kom Trikru,” she gestures with one palm, “Nia of Azgeda,” she lifts the other palm, “Chancellor Griffin, Kane, Jaha or whoever the hell it is now,” she nods her head in a westerly direction, “or the Four-Legged Baron of the Horse Clan.” Clarke smiles with exasperation. Empty. She gestures towards the Commander again. “Backstabbing, tree-climbing bitch?” she spits, then nods toward the dimming treeline. “Or ruthless, snow-shoveling Ice Queen? What a choice. Better pick my poison, soon I suppose.” Clarke takes a step closer. “How will I decide? Does Nia have a tower, too? Is it bigger than yours? Does she offer finer accommodations? Better food? You know what, I think I’d like more fish. Or perhaps,” she adds another step, “her eyes are greener than yours. Are they? Are they greener? More soulful?”

 

Lexa doesn’t blink, doesn’t move as Clarke slinks forward. Blue eyes as cold and empty as the sky. Lexa remembers the feeling of a knife slipping between her ribs, an old memory, but the closest thing to the snapping, breaking sensation now raging in her chest. She almost wishes it were another blade, anything but this. “Are her lips sweeter?” Clarke finally asks, words twisting like that knife, eyes dropping to the Commander’s mouth. “Maybe that’s how I’ll decide…” Clarke murmurs.

 

Lexa reels backward, jaw clenching. Puts space between them. “You think me cruel?” she whispers, voice wavering. Lungs crave air, the removal of that knife that is not there. “You will not know cruelty until you are in Nia’s clutches. With her you will only know pain, hatred and darkness.”

 

“And what? You brought me here to understand compassion and love, prosperity and reconciliation?”

 

“I brought you here to save you,” Lexa hisses. “I brought you here because there are greater things at work than what happened at the mountain. And I need you.”

 

This time Clarke really laughs, sinks into an armchair. “It’s too late for that,” she says between intakes of breath. “You can keep me in this room until the bombs drop again, but I will never help you.”

 

“I am not your enemy!”

 

“You sure about that?” Clarke explodes, rising from the chair like a tidal wave rising to meet the shore. “Because you’re making a strong case for being exactly that, Lexa!”

 

Lexa meets her gaze, swallows hard. She looks into Clarke’s blue eyes and feels like she’s drowning, struggling in the undercurrent there, a rock disappearing beneath the angry tumult and violence of the rising tide in the sky girl’s gaze. “My people,” she breathes, “must always come first. And I came here today to make you an offer to join my coalition—” Clarke begins to shake her head, but Lexa forges on, like tramping through snow without direction or light, “—so your people may fall under my protection. So I may treat them with the same generosity and equity as my other clans.” Lexa tries to keep her expression constructed in perfect apathy. She knows she is failing miserably.

 

“Why should I believe _anything_ you say? What evidence do I have that will prove you mean every word?” Lexa turns away, her rising panic making her restless, the strength of Clarke’s hatred and misunderstanding like poison in her blood. “Why would I do anything for you, Lexa?”

 

“ _Because I will lose you_ ,” she cries, whirling around to fix Clarke beneath a green gaze driven wild with fear. Somehow her eyes widen even further the second the words leave her lips. She inhales a deep, shivering breath, holds it for a moment as if to reel the words back in, a confession made in desperation.

 

“I am _not_ yours to lose,” Clarke growls. Again, she collapses into the armchair by the fire, a hand rising to her eyes. Lexa feels herself step forward instinctively, almost yanked, as if some magnetic force binds them together. Clarke doesn’t seem to notice.

 

Lexa stares into the fire, decides to move on, avoid touching the silent conversation that’s happening far beneath their words, that exists only in the bedrock. “As I told you, the Ice Nation has gathered an army just beyond Polis’s boundary.” The practicality of this statement helps, limps her back into the cast of the Commander of the Twelve Clans, the nitblida that ascended into the Flame. A place of authority and security, the only vantage point from which Lexa feels she can reach Clarke now. “Queen Nia plans an attack on Polis, but it will not be her first target. Understand this: Nia’s thirst for power runs deeper than simply overthrowing me. She seeks to assert her unquestioned, unchallenged reign over the entire region. And so she must first do what I have failed—what I have chosen, _fought_ —not to do.” For the first time in their conversation, she feels Clarke starting to listen. “The first strike is against the Skaikru.”

 

She watches eyes narrow. Watches Clarke’s expression shift from disbelief, sink into suspicion, and eventually transform to fear. “What?” she says quietly, all hostility dropped.

 

“Oh, I see. The Prince forgot to tell you that part.”

 

“Tell me what part, Lexa?”

 

“Skaikru has far fewer friends than enemies amongst the clans, and much of my ambassadorial council has called for your people’s removal from our lands. I have resisted those calls, to the point where my own leadership has been called into question.” Lexa steps closer to the simmering creature sitting in the armchair. “I have defended you and your people against the advice of my advisors, my _Fleimkeepa,_ and Commanders long dead, but my strength only lasts so long. Now you can sit there, petulantly, like a child,” Lexa bites, “or you can help me.”

 

Clarke is silent for a long time, weighing Lexa’s words. The air is still and thick, the midday sun beaming through the windows like great swords unsheathed and shining. They stand apart, and yet are forced together at the rim, the earth refusing to push or beg, the sky remote and cold. But finally, Clarke stirs. “What do I have to do?” she asks, and relief pours through Lexa like cool water on a burning day.

 

The Commander lifts her chin. “Come with me.”


End file.
